Class 



Book_ 



Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



The Legend of Our 
Antiquity 



or J ' By " 

W. ROCKWOOD CONOVER 

Author of 

Sallie Blue Bonnet 




Fort Orange Press 




Copyright 1913 
By the Author 



©CI.A332969 



Oil!* Ikgttti* af dHtr Attttipittg 



Ethnologically speaking, we are 
but just beginning to discern a faint 
gleam of light on the horizon of 
our prehistoric American civiliza- 
tion. Through the fanaticism of 
monks and priests; through ignor- 
ance and willful neglect of valuable 
historical manuscripts and picture 
writings (a neglect, which, at this 
day, appears nothing short of crim- 
inal) we are compelled to dig for 
the truth concerning the first races 
which inhabited the North American 
continent. The blind religious zeal 
and superstition of the conqueror 
has robbed the future of knowledge 
the world would give much to gain: 
namely, the origin of the first man 
who trod the soil of the Western 



World, which, through lack of this 
knowledge, we have been easily led 
and taught to call the New. The 
light of centuries was struck out in 
the period of the conquest, as it 
were in a night ; the remote history 
of a great civilization so obscured 
and hidden that we are left to hope- 
lessly guess at its beginnings, and 
grope in the dark among ruined 
temples and tombs and palaces for 
some ray that might point to the 
source from whence it sprang. 

The Spanish voyagers were settled 
in the belief that they had discov- 
ered a new world; it may yet be 
proven that it was but the wandering 
of men about the earth in search of 
their original home. Geologically 
speaking the term New World is 
incorrect. This appellation is proper 
only in so far as it has reference to 
its discovery and settlement by 

4 



Europeans. Underneath that vast, 
glacier - eroded area beyond our 
northern boundary and far into 
the distant, frozen regions of the 
Arctic Northwest lie deposits of sedi- 
mentary rocks of the Archaean 
period, the oldest known to geol- 
ogists. Comparatively speaking, the 
Old World possesses but little of 
this strata, the most noteworthy of 
which exists in the Hebrides Islands, 
in parts of Europe, and, also, in 
Norway and Sweden where limited 
areas of the same formation have 
been found. 

From an ethnological standpoint 
we are not yet prepared to prove 
that the first home of man was in 
either Asia or Egypt. We are a full 
century and more behind the East in 
the matter of excavations, and the 
world may yet be astounded to learn 
what lies beneath the forests of our 

5 



temperate and tropical zones. To 
say that Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica becomes more and more but an 
absurd historical tale of our school 
days — so recent a fact in history, in 
point of time, as to have lost its 
paint of glamour and wonder. Older 
than Spain — older than Babylon it- 
self may yet prove to be the cities 
in the jungles of Yucatan, when we 
have dug deep enough beneath its 
tropical forests. Votan, founder of 
the prehistoric city of Xibalba, is 
said to have come in ships from a 
distant land as early as 955 B.C., 
and to have established his tribe in 
the regions about what is now known 
as the city of Palenque. But this is 
mere tradition and avails us nothing. 
Skeletons of human races have been 
discovered deeply buried in deposits, 
the age of which points us farther 
back into that dim past, concerning 
6 



which we are left, like children, to 
mere speculations. It is the wildest 
conjecture to say these races were 
the ancestors of the Aztecs or other 
races inhabiting Ancient Mexico and 
the Tropics. Their fossilized remains 
have been found all over the conti- 
nent — not merely in the tropical 
regions of Central America and Yuca- 
tan, or along the Pacific coast to the 
northward, toward which ethnolo- 
gists are prone to point as the orig- 
inal home of all races of Aztec, 
Nahuan or Toltec blood. The Atlan- 
tic and Gulf coasts, as well as the 
central regions of the Ohio and 
Mississippi River valleys, have fur- 
nished their share of these remains. 
We ask, Who were the builders of 
the temples and mounds, of the 
ramparts and fortifications south of 
the Great Lakes and in the valleys 
of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers ? 
7 



Here again we are left to hopeless 
speculation — the more hopeless be- 
cause no hieroglyph or manuscript 
or legend remains to tell us of the 
race. It seems evident it was not a 
nomadic one. It must, indeed, have 
been a numerous people and pos- 
sessed of intelligence and no small 
degree of civilization to have con- 
structed military defences of such 
proportions. 

We point in wonder to the Aztec 
nation — its remarkable examples of 
architecture; the vastness of its 
buildings and grandeur of its pal- 
aces; to the extent of its empire; 
and above all to its philosophy and 
science, its chronology, its religious 
beliefs, and its system of education. 
No monarch of modern times can 
boast a system of laws and tribute 
and military rule more complete in 
8 



its wide-reaching control, when we 
consider the period. 

So much has been written of the 
architecture of ancient peoples that 
to mention this in any manner lead- 
ing into descriptive is to enter into 
needless repetition. The great pyra- 
mids of Teotihuacan and Cholula; 
the nine-storied temple of Tezcuco, 
built by Nezahualcoyotl in honor of 
the God Tloquenahuaque ; and the 
king's palace in Tenochtitlan, with 
its vast halls and numerous apart- 
ments, attest the skill of the races 
that dwelt in the valley of Anahuac. 
The palace of Tezcuco, with its 
gardens and groves and fountains, 
has been frequently cited by the 
historian of New World architecture 
in evidence of the advancement of 
the Tezcucan nation, which dwelt 
in close proximity to the ancient 
capital. The traveller, who visits 

9 



the city of Mexico today, little 
thinks, as he passes down the main 
thoroughfare, that he treads the 
same broad avenue, which stretched 
between the causeways which led to 
the city's gates from the north and 
south. On these same causeways, 
built of stone masonry and extend- 
ing for more than a league in a direct 
line through the salt reaches of the 
lake, dividing the waters of Chalco 
from those of Lake Xochicalco, 
several horsemen could, in many 
places, ride abreast. Nor does he 
always recall to mind the fact that, 
as he bows in devotion in the great 
Spanish cathedral of the present day, 
he worships on the identical spot 
where stood the vast temple of the 
Aztec Deity Huitzilopochtli, whom 
Montezuma and his priests and the 
nation worshipped with a zeal and 
devotion far surpassing his own. 

10 



How little we have that is really 
new at the present day, except in 
mode of construction or adaptation; 
and how much we have copied from 
the early races we have been taught 
to look back upon as undeveloped 
or barbarous! We pride ourselves 
in the great works of engineering of 
the present century, forgetting the 
suspension bridges of the Peruvians, 
the lift bridges and aqueducts and 
tunnels of Anahuac, of which coun- 
try our forefathers knew practically 
nothing. To them the great land to 
the west of the Atlantic was the 
New World — a vast wilderness, un- 
broken, uncivilized ; offering nothing 
but timber and furs, and metals yet 
to be discovered. The story of the 
land of Montezuma and his empire 
was a chimerical tale of the visionary 
Spanish voyager, worthy of little 
credit and much suspicion; and, 
ii 



despite the work of the investigator 
and historian in later times, we have 
dropped into much the same attitude 
of indifference toward the nation, 
which becomes more and more a 
wonder to us as we study its civili- 
zation and advancement, and specu- 
late, hopelessly though it may be, 
upon its origin. 

The dweller in Tenochtitlan might 
well laugh to scorn our modern 
municipalities and the farcical play 
we sometimes make at city govern- 
ment. A regular organized police 
force patroled the ancient capital for 
the peace and safety of its citizens, 
and for the purposes of enforcing 
cleanliness ; and a full two centuries 
and more before our larger cities 
could boast a single asphalted street, 
the main thoroughfares of the cap- 
ital were paved with cement, and a 
thousand men employed in sweeping 

12 



and watering the principal avenues. 
Every public officer was held strictly- 
accountable to the king, who, on 
frequent occasions, disguised himself 
in citizen's garb and walked about 
the town that he might learn any 
abuses to which the people were sub- 
jected. We might go on in almost 
endless enumeration to prove that 
the civilization of the past two 
centuries on the American continent 
was preceded a hundred years and 
more by one which, if not as fully 
developed, exhibited in a high de- 
gree that intelligent mode of human 
living and human progress, which 
had already passed through many 
successive stages of development 
before any of the nations of the 
East had touched the shores of the 
Western World. It is but just to 
refer in passing to the aviaries and 
menageries, where were kept all the 
13 



various species of birds and animals, 
not only of the surrounding districts 
but of distant territories as well ; the 
museums of the same general char- 
acter of those of the present time; 
the extensive gardens filled with 
beautiful flowers and trees and aro- 
matic shrubs, watered by aqueducts 
and fountains, and intersected by 
shaded paths ; the great stone reser- 
voir, approximating a mile in cir- 
cumference, with its encircling mar- 
ble walk at the top, and sculptured 
sides, and steps leading to the waters 
edge, supplying the aqueducts and 
fountains. It is worth our while, as 
we study these things of history, to 
stop and tarry a bit in Istapalapan, 
and recall that Europe possessed no 
gardens similar to these for a score 
of years after the discovery of the 
ancient capital of Anahuac and these 
flowery environs. In the great tian- 
14 



guez we watch the thousands come to 
market with produce from the sur- 
rounding country, and, as we pass 
from stall to stall and see the stores 
of maize and cocoa and fruits and 
vegetables, game and fish; and far- 
ther on the booths in which are 
displayed various articles of leather, 
costly woven cotton garments and 
gorgeous feather work, we ask our- 
selves, Have we anything new or 
original ? We are yet more surprised 
as we enter the booths of the gold- 
smiths and metal workers, and find 
that we can buy delicately hammered 
gold and metal ornaments and neck- 
laces and bracelets as we do today ; 
and dishes and ornamental vases 
from the potteries of Cholula, said 
to equal the wares of the cities of 
Old Spain. Nor were these all. 
There were painters, and stone- 
cutters, and chair-makers; floral 
15 



booths, and booths for the apothe- 
caries, for these races cultivated 
large gardens of medicinal herbs, 
and studied the scientific use of them 
in healing. Building materials, stone, 
lime, timber, etc., were on sale near 
the waterways, in convenient local- 
ities. The manufacture of salt was 
one of the leading occupations of 
the people, as was, also, the cultiva- 
tion of cochineal for the purpose of 
coloring the delicately woven fabrics 
of cotton and fur and feathers for 
clothing and draperies. The capital 
contained an armory, where w^ere 
stored the arms for its defense, as 
well as for military expeditions into 
the surrounding country. A more 
noteworthy evidence of refinement 
than these weapons of warfare were 
the barber shops of the tianguez, 
where one might be shaved with a 
razor of itztli, an alloy capable of 
16 



receiving a fine edge when made 
into tools or instruments. 

We might thus go on almost in- 
definitely noting down the things 
indicative of long years of develop- 
mental processes in the history of 
the nations of Anahuac. The popu- 
lation of the capital and surrounding 
cities are a wonder to us, and we 
wonder yet more as we re-read what 
seem to be mere chimerical tales con- 
cerning the king and the vast treas- 
ures of his empire, and the secret 
chamber containing the treasures of 
his father, King Axayacatl. We 
are led, as we contemplate the 
rich mode of his life, to declare that 
he was far removed from that type 
of early American grouped under the 
convenient head of Aborigine, In- 
dian or Savage. When we consider 
that his table was supplied daily 
with fish, fresh from the distant 
17 



waters of the gulf, and fruits from 
the tierra-caliente; that he was served 
by his nobles and beautiful women 
of the royal household; that his 
foods were kept warm by chafing 
dishes ; that he was entertained after 
meals by musicians and dancers and 
jugglers, while he smoked tobacco 
and watched the performance of 
legerdemain feats surpassing in skill 
those of either China or Hindoostan, 
our interest is aroused in attempting 
to trace, not his origin alone, but the 
nation's as well. No man, except he 
be of the royal lineage might enter 
his presence, without having first 
covered his citizen's garb with the 
nequen mantle. 

Whence sprang this man of power 
and opulence, with a nation of almost 
countless thousands — composed of 
the descendants of the people that 
came from the mysterious North 
18 



long centuries before, of the inhabi- 
tants of the tierra-caliente, and the 
long reaches of coast washed by 
both the Gulf and the Pacific — pay- 
ing not only their homage, through 
loyalty, fear, or the more potent 
influence of superstition and tradi- 
tion, to his superior intelligence and 
will; but paying, also, the tithes 
of the products of the country and 
of their own toil that the royal 
household might be maintained in 
the magnificent style of Old World 
kings ? 

In the gathering of taxes, the 
administration of courts of justice, 
the punishment of criminals both 
public and private, in chronology, 
in philosophy and religion, in 
science and mathematics, — even in 
the system of education, we have 
sufficient historical proof of a degree 
of advancement among the early 
19 



races inhabiting Anahuac over four 
hundred years ago — before ever a 
white man from the East had trod 
the soil of the mainland of this con- 
tinent — that calls forth both our 
surprise and our admiration. We 
reject many of the rites of the early 
races as unchristian and barbaric, 
but it is well to remember that they 
believed in the Great Spirit, Creator 
of the world; and the Tezcucan 
prince, and nobleman, and private 
citizen as well, worshipped in the 
nine-storied temple, with its starry 
roof (built by Nezahualcoyotl, the 
king) the Great Tloquenahuaque, the 
Invisible; and in their religious 
faith was embodied one, if not more, 
of the traditions of our own religion. 
Men in all time have pointed other 
nations to the true God. We of this 
day have thrown away many super- 
stitions zealously held by our ances- 

20 



tors of less than a century ago. The 
inherited beliefs and practices of one 
generation may become the scoffing 
and derision of the next. The dweller 
in Anahuac was seeking truth as all 
nations have sought it, and are seek- 
ing it. We have many barbarous 
and unchristian things in life today, 
and, while the repugnant sacrifices 
on the altars of the teocalli repel us 
with disgust, they infused into the 
people awe and solemn reverence, 
despite the pomp and splendor with 
which all the religious festivals were 
celebrated within the ancient capital. 

Strange it is, indeed, that the 
overthrow of this powerful empire 
in America was prophesied for so 
many generations, until it had be- 
come as fixed in the minds of the 
people as the tenets of their complex 
religious system; and stranger still 
that the ruin wrought to the nation 

21 



in the wanton destruction of its 
legends and history , and what was 
best of its arts and culture and 
refinement, in that stage of develop- 
ment when it was rapidly moving 
forward, was foretold to come from 
the East. It may be questioned, and 
with all seriousness, whether the 
Spanish conquerors, in their brutal 
passions and lust of gain, have not 
blotted out a civilization, which, in 
process of time would have far 
eclipsed their own. Not only this, 
but it appears evident that, through 
their blind fanaticism and ignoble 
zeal to do away with what, in their 
misguided judgment, were but the 
works of a barbarous and evil super- 
stition, thev have lost to us the 
greater portion of valuable docu- 
mentary proofs of the antiquity of 
man on this continent. 

Lord Kingsborough has attempted 

22 



to prove that this part of prehistoric 
America was colonized by Israelites, 
but he has not succeeded. Certain 
it is that the beginnings of evolution 
toward culture and refinement in the 
human race were not all of the 
classic East nor of Europe. That 
progress in intelligently directed 
human thought and mode of life 
had begun to be made at a remote 
period in the Western Hemisphere, 
is proven, beyond doubt, by facts 
and evidences gathered by the his- 
torian and traveller in later times. 

It has been said that the archi- 
tecture of these races, of which so 
many examples existed four centu- 
ries ago, and may still exist in 
buried cities, dates back no farther 
than the Conquest. It is impossible 
that any nation or king could sud- 
denly bring together engineers and 
masons, decorators in wood inlaying 
23 



and stone mosaics, all within a short 
space of time, and without long 
years of previous training or inher- 
ited tendency toward skilled crafts- 
manship. This ground is untenable, 
and does not explain satisfactorily 
the civilization that must for cen- 
turies have been in a progressive 
stage of development before it 
reached the period when such mon- 
uments of its skill and advancement 
were possible of creation. 

All this is mere preface, and we 
have arrived no nearer the truth we 
seek to know. After perusing the 
works of Gama and Humboldt and 
Robertson, the indisputable fact re- 
mains that we know practically 
nothing of the ancestors of the race 
that first built its houses of reeds on 
the marshes of the lake, and grew to 
spread its civilization and empire 
from the Gulf to the Pacific over 
24 



the mountains and valleys of Ana- 
huac. Even the historian Ixtlil- 
zochitl— a lineal descendant of the 
royal line — has failed to trace the 
house of his forefathers back into 
that dim and distant past — the dawn 
of the first man on the American 
continent. We know more of Rome 
and Carthage and Byzantium, more 
of ancient Babylon, than of Tenoch- 
titlan, the glorious capital of a great 
race, that lies at our very doors. 

The ten thousand remains of 
mounds and enclosures north of the 
Ohio, the builders of which the 
ethnologist has been forced to con- 
fess himself in total ignorance of, 
still puzzle us; still more the dis- 
covery of skeletons of prehistoric 
man at Guadaloupe, Natchez, New 
Orleans, Charleston, in the Florida 
coral reefs, in California, in Orchilla, 
and at Petit Anse. The strata in 
25 



the Mississippi delta, in which Dr. 
Dowler discovered human bones, is 
assigned an age of fifty thousand 
years by geologists; that in Cali- 
fornia, beneath Table Mountain, 
where remains were also found, is 
ascribed to the Pliocene or Post 
Pliocene period by eminent author- 
ities. More recent are the discoveries 
of human bones in the clay beds of 
Nebraska, several of which were 
gathered in one spot, indicating a 
family burial place or funeral pyre. 
The age of this deposit is set at ten 
to twenty thousand years. 

Some students of ethnology have 
been led to discover in the similarity 
of social customs, the style and use 
of weapons, and in religious beliefs 
and practices, the origin of American 
races in those of Asia and other 
countries of the East. If communi- 
cation existed between the prehis- 
26 



toric races of America and those of 
the Old World at any period subse- 
quent to the Stone Age, the truth 
of this fact has yet to be demon- 
strated before we can accept it. 
Nearly all writers on the subject 
with, perhaps, the exception of Ober, 
who believes in the independent evo- 
lution of our earliest civilizations, 
have persisted, with varying degrees 
of inconsistency, in looking outside 
the American continent for the origin 
of its peoples; and have pursued 
their investigations along this line, 
with this theory constantly before 
them : consequently, it has been easy 
to arrive at conclusions for which 
there is not sufficient fundamental 
basis. M. Charnay has identified the 
Toltec civilizations not only with 
Indo Chinese and Malays, but with 
other Asiatic races as well. Another 
writer declares them to have de- 
27 



scended from the Tartar tribes. If 
we study the ancient dweller in 
Anahuac of Aztec blood, whether the 
type be that marked by low fore- 
head, oval face, high cheek bones, 
and long, oblique eyes, or other varie- 
ties of form and feature (of which 
are the low stature and broad or 
lengthened skull bones), we find little 
or no resemblance to the peoples of 
Europe, either in the same or differ- 
ent latitudes. There are traces more 
nearly resembling the Mongolian 
type of man, who inhabited that 
section of Asia where it approaches 
nearest to the North American con- 
tinent. Even the people of Nahuan 
blood differ in tongue from the 
Maya, Quiche, and others of Cen- 
tral America; while, 1 on the other 
hand, the bas-reliefs, carvings, and 
sculpture work of these races, both 
in the temples and on obelisks, differ 
28 



sufficiently in character from those 
of the Toltecs to indicate with rea- 
sonable certainty that this part of 
the country was settled long before 
the Toltecs arrived. It is an undis- 
puted fact that many of their cities 
were partially, if not wholly, buried 
ruins when the Toltec immigration 
took place. Thus the complexity of 
the problem multiplies, and the diffi- 
culty of our task increases. 

When the work of excavation is 
begun in earnest, the student of 
research will have something over 
threescore ruined cities in Yucatan 
alone among which to dig. There 
are several, more noteworthy than 
the rest, located about the capital 
Merida, where will, there is evidence 
to believe, be unearthed the ex- 
amples of a remarkable architectural 
development. Of the ruins already 
discovered those of Chichen-Itza, 
29 



Uxmal, and two other towns, Ake, 
and Kabah, surpass even the famed 
Palenque and Copan. And there are 
Izamal, Mayapan, and very ancient 
Tihu on which Merida stands. M. 
Charnay confidently assigned all the 
buildings and evidences of civiliza- 
tion in these places to Toltec origin. 
This belief it would appear, at first 
thought, he had all too readily 
adopted from Morelet and others of 
his predecessors; but Charnay has 
shown himself a careful observer, and 
has written with a clear and distinct 
perspective, a painstaking and seem- 
ingly thorough understanding of his 
subject. 

The language of nearly all the 
races, both of the valleys and higher 
elevations of the Andes and Cordil- 
lera ranges, extending far to the 
north and south of the equator, 
were, at that date, but dialects, dif- 
30 



fering in degrees of purity, of the 
Toltec tongue. Everything in archi- 
tecture and religion, in customs and 
mode of life, in sculpture — their 
whole civilization, these writers 
would apparently attribute to Tol- 
tec origin. Migrations of this race 
have been traced by M. Charnay on 
both side of the Cordilleras south to 
Copan in Honduras, but the com- 
parative similarity in architecture 
and institutions does not infallibly 
prove the accuracy of this assump- 
tion. The Toltec nation, with its 
advanced culture, exercised a domi- 
nating influence over the other less 
civilized tribes which dwelt on the 
table lands of the North; but this 
was also true of the Incas, who held 
sway over the surrounding nations 
in the mountain districts of Peru, 
as well as in some portions of the 
coast country, and, consequently, 
31 



the fundamental roots of their lan- 
guage were absorbed by and became 
a part of the spoken language of 
these nations. Cholula, said to rival 
the cities of Old Spain in its delicate 
pottery, is admitted to have been 
founded by the Ulmecs, a race which 
preceded the Toltec emigrations from 
the north. And pottery was not its 
only claim of advancement over the 
other cities of the time. It was a 
center of cotton manufactures and 
agave cloths; and its inhabitants 
exhibited great skill in the working 
of various kinds of metals, which 
drew the people of distant towns, 
many leagues away, to its fairs and 
markets. 

To account for all the races scat- 
tered in a nearly continuous line 
along the Cordilleras and Andes 
ranges from 35 N. to 35 S. latitude 
— the Aztecs, Toltecs, and Nahuans 
32 



of the North ; the Zapotecs of Chia- 
pas; Mayas of Yucatan; Quiches 
and Kachiquels of Guatemala; the 
Muyscas of Bogota, and Incas of 
Peru- — with all the many branches 
and subdivisions of language and 
type and character, by migrations 
across the Atlantic or Pacific, either 
from Europe or Asia, is to draw 
altogether too boldly upon the imag- 
ination of the person of even aver- 
age ethnological research and un- 
derstanding. 

There has been a tendency, also, 
on the part of certain writers to 
lay much emphasis on the similarity 
of stone structures in Palenque to 
those of Egypt; and the fact of 
this similarity has been sufficient 
basis for some to point with cer- 
tainty to that country as the one 
from which the progenitors of the 
races occupying the tropical regions 

33 



of America came. There would 
appear equally as much reason in 
this as in looking to Western Europe 
for our prehistoric ancestry, for the 
masonry of the ruined cities of 
Yucatan, in some respects at least, 
shows a much more advanced state 
of civilization, and a more fully 
developed stage of craftsmanship, 
than the Celtic architecture of that 
period. Nor are the rambling struc- 
tures of unhewn stone and clay in 
Ancient Greece — the so-called Pe- 
lasgic type — in any degree to be 
compared to the buildings with 
vaulted roofs of stone and cement 
construction, or to those numerous 
examples of bas-reliefs with their 
curiously carved decorations, and 
the ornamental inlaid work of wood 
and stone, found in the cities men- 
tioned. The Spanish conquerors 
were forced to confess that, in more 

34 



than one instance, the architectural 
construction in the cities which they 
visited equaled, if not excelled, that 
of ancient Granada, the famed cap- 
ital of the Moors. 

And what of that vast country to 
the east, broken off from the South 
American continent and buried be- 
neath the waters of the Carribean? 
Investigations of future years will 
doubtless yield yet more remarkable 
evidences of the early existence of 
man in the Western Hemisphere 
than our present knowledge, gained 
from comparatively limited ethno- 
logical research, has afforded. It 
may be proven that this territory, 
now long submerged, was peopled 
from the earliest ages by a vast 
civilization. There may be found to 
exist beneath the waters, which the 
ships of adventurers and explorers 
have for centuries plowed, innumer- 

35 



able cities of vast proportions, and 
villages without number scattered 
throughout its plains and valleys — 
the seat of an ancient race, antedat- 
ing the earliest known races of the 
East, greater in education and cul- 
ture and religion, more advanced in 
art and architecture and industry, 
and more civilized in its mode of 
life, than any of the so-called ancient 
peoples of the Old World. 

To call all of the early American 
races Indian gives but a vague and 
meaningless impression of their cul- 
ture or progress. The term carries 
with it too much of the hitherto 
accepted notion that all the inhab- 
itants of the Western World, before 
the period of invasion by adven- 
turers and discoverers, were barbar- 
ous and savage. We have not to go 
back far in our history to recall the 
time when religious fanaticism and 
36 



superstition disgraced the century 
with burnings at the stake, and tor- 
tures too cruel and inhuman to con- 
template in this enlightened age. 
Except for the barbarous practice 
of sacrificing captives on their tem- 
ple altars, the inhabitants of Tenoch- 
titlan and Tezcuco exhibited a cul- 
ture far above the surrounding tribes 
of Indian blood. The garments of 
cotton, interwoven with delicate 
gold and silver ornamentation and 
adorned with many -colored feather 
work, astonished the Spaniards with 
their beauty of design and work- 
manship. The padded coat of cotton 
mail was adopted by the conquerors 
as superior to their own. Witness 
also the operation of laws and in- 
stitutions of government in the cap- 
ital. It would be difficult to picture 
a monarch or president of this day 
disguising his person in the garb of 

37 



the ordinary citizen, and going about 
the streets of the city to learn the 
true condition of the common people, 
and the abuses of the law. One 
monarch of the royal line is said to 
have tempted his judges with secret 
bribes in order that he might test 
their honesty and loyalty to the 
government. 

All this appears at first glance to 
be unnecessary repetition of what 
has previously been written or said, 
but it is to prove, with a large 
measure of truth and with reason- 
able potency of fact, that the pro- 
cesses of evolution in the human 
family were going on in America 
centuries before the arrival of the 
hated and cruel white invader from 
the East, and coeval with those same 
processes in Europe and in Asia. 
And for how many centuries, or for 
how long before the first European 
38 



set foot on the sands washed by the 
Western Ocean, and bathed in the 
sun that sank behind the Cordil- 
leras into the Pacific, we shall not 
know until the work of excavation 
has proceeded on a scale of expen- 
diture and enthusiasm comparable, 
in a measure at least, with that which 
has unfolded to us the history and 
treasures of the buried cities of the 
East. 

That human ideas and human 
practices in domestic life, in gov- 
ernment, or in the usages of war, 
have their parallel in widely diver- 
gent regions of the earth does not 
prove that the races inhabiting these 
far separated regions came in con- 
tact with each other either before 
or since the Stone Age. It but the 
more conclusively proves that man 
is man wherever we find him; in 
whatever stage of development ; and 

39 



imbued with the genius of human 
progress, which, given proper en- 
vironment and helpful- conditions, 
works out his own evolution in his 
own way — touching at some period 
or stage of the process his fellow 
creature at the Antipodes or ex- 
treme longitude from his own. 

We expect to find the inventive 
genius of mankind more fully de- 
veloped in latitudes where rigor of 
climate render the procuring of food 
more difficult, and the protection of 
the body with clothing a necessity. 
It is worthy of note that, notwith- 
standing the correctness of this as- 
sumption in the main, everything 
tends to prove that the highest 
development in civilization, and 
greatest progress in arts and agri- 
culture among the early North Amer- 
ican races was in the warmer regions 
lying between the Gulf of Mexico and 
40 



the Pacific, and in Yucatan. This 
might, indeed, be set down as evi- 
dence that these races had already 
passed through several stages of 
development in the evolutionary pro- 
cess some centuries before their im- 
migration to this part of the con- 
tinent. 

The early Norwegian and Swed- 
ish voyagers, who visited Greenland 
and subsequently the continent, be- 
lieved the inhabitants of the main- 
land to have emigrated thither from 
that country. Their conclusions were 
based on the fact that the people of 
- the adjoining coast districts of the 
mainland spoke the same dialects as 
the inhabitants of Greenland. They 
had no proof, other than the above 
circumstances, to substantiate this 
theory, and we may as rightfully 
assume that the first home of the 
Esquimaux was in the frozen re- 
41 



gions of our own Alaska and the 
British Northwest; and that suc- 
cessive migrations were made across 
the great, trackless North Country 
to Labrador, and thence across the 
waters of Davis' Strait. 

We go on through endless specu- 
lations to what end ? It remains for 
the excavator to unearth the history 
and legends which may, at some 
future date, tell us that we are living 
in the Old World and not the New; 
or else to prove that all our theories 
are but theories still — the hopeless 
search of humankind in the dark. 
And, after all our pains and all our 
seeking, the unhappy fact may still 
taunt us, that fanaticism and cruelty 
and ignorance have, in a large meas- 
ure, defeated our effort, and ren- 
dered the work of the investigator of 
only limited value in demonstrating 
the truth we seek to prove. 

42 



halite Mm Sonnet 

A Thrilling Romance of the North 
Country 

By W. Rockwood Conover 




THIS story is laid about the old Catamount Tavern 
(one of the most famous hostelries in all the North 
Country) during the most exciting period of our history. 
The characters are real, living characters of the time. 
The book has received the highest criticism from many 
sources. 

"A fascinating story;" 

"Distinctive and intensely interesting;" 

"A book of exceptional merit;" 

"A valuable contribution to the literature of the 
region;" are some of the things said about it. 

AT BOOKSELLERS 
Postpaid in U. S. on receipt of price $1.35. 
Address: 

Eastwood Publication Office, Schenectady, N. Y. 



r 



MAR IB 1918 



